Cigarettes and Soviets

Tricia Starks is Director of the Humanities Center and Professor of History at the University of Arkansas. She is the author of Body Soviet and Smoking under the Tsars.

• INTRODUCTION: The Revolutionary Soviet Smoker1. ATTACKED: Commissar Semashko and Tobacco Prohibition2. RESURRECTED: Nationalized Factories and Revitalized Industry3. SOLD: Revolutionary Advertising and Communist Consumption4. TREATED: Individual Will and Collective Therapy5. UNFULFILLED: Commissar Mikoian and Stalinized Production6. MOBILIZED: Frontline Provision and Factory Evacuations7. RECOVERED: Women's Kingdoms and Manly Habits8. PARTNERED: Space Cigarettes and Soviet Marlboros9. PRESSURED: Demographic Crisis and Popular Discontent10. OVERWHELMED: The Post-Soviet Smoker

Enlightening and thought-provoking.(Toward Freedom) Cigarettes and Soviets makes two important and original contributions to the existing public health literature: it recounts an episode of the history of tobacco different from the much more studied one in the West, and it is the liveliest history I know of the evolution of public health in the USSR. The illustrations are esthetically compelling, and Starks excels in describing their content, hidden meaning, and even taste and feel for the smoker.(American Journal of Public Health) Cigarettes and Soviets makes important contributions to recent work on the global history of tobacco use, along with adding to our understanding of socialist consumption and everyday life. Most delightfully, Starks's book demonstrates a keen understanding of Soviet visual culture in all its unex- pected and paradoxical dimensions, and her beautiful prose evokes the sights and smells of ordinary places in the USSR.(Russian Review) Tricia Starks tells the story of tobacco and smoking during the Soviet period. But perhaps it is more accurate to say that she tells part of the history of the Soviet Union through the prism of smoking(Moscow Times) a beautifully written and jargon free account.(New Books Network)